SERBIAN SAINT WHO IS NOT SPOKEN OF: Double doctor of sciences from the Sorbonne became a monk, communists killed him because he shared the “Our Father” prayer!

A double doctor of sciences from the University of Sorbonne and the University of Montpellier, former ambassador of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in Paris and a distinguished intellectual, Radoje Arsovic renounced the world at the peak of his career, took monastic vows and later became a saint of the Serbian Orthodox Church.

He became a monk before the Second World War and was a monk at the Zica Monastery, serving as the right hand of Nikolaj Velimirovic, known as Saint Bishop Nikolaj of Ohrid and Zica.

Few Serbs today know anything about him, even though he is another Serbian saint.

He was born in 1894 in the village of Kusici near Ivanjica. He finished elementary and secondary school in Serbia, and then received two doctorates in France – in philosophy at the Sorbonne and in law at the University of Montpellier.

He worked in the diplomatic service of the Kingdom of Yugoslavia in France, and in 1929 he was appointed ambassador to Paris. He returned to the country in 1937, when he translated the book “Lives of the Holy Maidens.”

After the Orthodox Bogomoljacki Council in Vrnjacka Banja, under the leadership of Bishop Nikolaj, he decided to leave the diplomatic service. He went first to Ohrid, and then to Bitola, where he served alongside Bishop Nikolaj.

He took monastic vows in Bitola in 1938 and received the monastic name Jakov. Thus, an intellectual with two doctorates and a high social position decided to renounce the world and spend the rest of his life as a monk in strict asceticism. With Bishop Nikolaj, he moved to the monastic brotherhood of the Zica monastery, as a brother. In the summer of 1941, he also stayed at the Ljubostinja Monastery, where Bishop Nikolaj was interned.

Upon returning from Ohrid before the Second World War, he edited the magazines “Pismo” and “Misionar” in Kragujevac. With a suitcase full of books, he walked between Cacak and Kraljevo, where he missionized and preached. He was silent, humble, calm and insightful. He spoke of the upcoming German bombing of Belgrade and the suffering of the Serbian people.

The residents of Kraljevo remembered him for walking the streets of the city before the war leading oxen yoked in a harness and warning the people that slavery lay ahead.

During the Second World War, he preached in Belgrade churches, and when that was forbidden, he continued to speak in high schools and schools.

He was beaten to death in 1946 by the communist authorities after he distributed 8,000 copies of the “Our Father” prayer at the railway station in Pozarevac. He soon died a martyr’s death as a result of the beating, after the communist authorities had previously imprisoned and tortured him to renounce his religious beliefs.

As Jakov the New of Tuman, he was declared a saint, and the Serbian Orthodox Church celebrates him on August 21st every year.